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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Pineapple Tarts Again! (Part Two)

This is the part two of my recent pineapple tart experimental baking.

In my previous post , I have tabulated and compared three pineapple tart recipes by standardising their butter content to 100g in order to have a better understanding their differences. Using my homemade pineapple jam, I have baked the tarts and let's see the result...

Here are the interesting characteristics, pros and cons of the three recipes used:

One from Mandy of Fresh from the OvenThis recipe uses creaming method to cream butter and egg yolk before mixing in the dry ingredients.Pros - The pastry dough is easy to handle even at room temperature.Cons - The baked tarts are quite fragile and require careful handling when stacking them into the cookie jars. As shown in Mandy's post, hers were the enclosed ones and I reckon the enclosed ones might be tougher to handle than the open-faced ones.

Two from Alvina of Alvina's Baking JourneyThis recipe uses rubbing-in method and contains milk powder to create a nice melt-in-the mouth effect.Pros - True enough that the pastry of these tarts does melt-in-the-mouth with a little extra milky taste. Good that this recipe can be used to make both enclosed and open-faced kind of pineapple tarts.Cons - Pastry dough is very soft and need to be chilled before shaping and rolling.

Three from Sugahmommy of A Spoonful of SugahThis recipe uses rubbing-in method and contains whole egg and the least amount of sugar. Pros - The tarts are sturdy and stacking them into cookie jar is never a problem. As described, these tarts are indeed slightly firmer with a biscuit-like texture.Cons - Pastry dough is very soft too and need to be chilled before shaping and rolling.

Sieve all purpose flour, corn flour, salt and icing sugar into a medium bowl. Beat butter in a mixer until it turns light in color and fluffy. Add in egg yolk until well combined. Slowly beat in the flour mixture until just combined.

Although the dough is workable at this stage, I have standardised all recipes and chilled the dough for at least 30 mins before proceeding the assembly.

To assemble, roll pineapple filling into small individual rounds. Turn dough out and roll into small rounds. Flatten the rounds and use it to cover the prepared filling.

Note: I rolled the dough into 0.5 cm thickness and cut them into shapes into my mould. I placed small and rolled teaspoonful of pineapple jam in the center of each pastry and decorated the edge with a pincher.

Brush the unbaked rolls with egg wash.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350F/180ºC for 10 to 15 mins or till lightly brown.

Sift flours and icing sugar together, twice. Cut butter into small pieces and run into sifted flour. After it is completely rubbed in, add egg and then slowly add in the cold water (only if needed and I didn't do that) to get a nice and fairly firm dough.

Wrap each portion in plastic wrap and chill for 30 mins. Roll out into 0.5 cm thickness between 2 sheets of plastic and then chill again for another 15 mins. (I skipped this chilling step)

Meanwhile, roll jam into small balls for easy filling.

Take out dough and cut using a pineapple tart mould. Fill with jam. If dough is too soft to work with, flour your hands, the work table and rolling pin, making sure not to add too much flour to the dough or it will become tough. If necessary, flour the tart cutter before cutting each tart, so that the tart removes easily with all its patterns/grooves intact.

Arrange tarts on tray lined with baking paper. Chill in fridge for about 10 mins (I skipped this last chilling step), then bake at 140ºC for about 30 mins. When ready, leave to cool and store. ----

For all three recipes, I have baked all tarts at 160ºC fan forced for 13 mins----

We are very happy with all the tarts made with the above recipes but there is always a winner in respective with all comparisons and the winner is Recipe One, Fresh from the oven

Although the fresh from the oven's tarts are quite fragile and difficult to handle, they are the tastiest of all. In fact, this recipe contains the most amount of icing sugar than the other two. Interestingly, even with more flours content and without the milk powder, these simple tarts are able to melt into our mouth and even melt better than the ones made with the other two recipes.

With all these baking, I also learned that whole eggs does firm up the final texture of pastry creating a nice biscuit-y texture. And, if you are the person who prefer the biscuit-y kind of pineapple tart, Recipe Three, A Spoonful of Sugah would be the perfect recipe for you.

Honestly, I think both are equally good! Why? I guess this may be the answer to my question...

When I compared both recipes by standardising their butter content to 100g, I found out that they are actually quite the same! Their amount of flour + cornfour, icing sugar and egg yolk are almost the same. The main difference is their mixing method which require an extra 20g of flour to firm up the dough if the butter is creamed at room temperature.

Another thing that I have noticed is that The Little Teochew has used 8g more cornflour than Fresh from the oven which makes the pastry more melt-y with a lesser gluten content. When I re-visited The Little Teochew recipe, a curious me had replaced all-purpose flour with cake flour and the outcome is actually quite disastrous! The tarts made with cake flour are extremely fragile to handle and so I would like to conclude that these two recipes have reached their maximum point of their melt-in-mouth composition.

Last and most importantly, I learned not to reduce the amount of icing sugar in any these recipes further. Without adequate amount of sweetness, these pineapple tarts wouldn't be tasty at all.

Depending on individual tastes
and preferences, the best pineapple tart or even other bakes can be
very subjective. I realized that some of my relatives (being Asians) don't like the milky smell of butter at all and prefer their tarts made with margarine. Now, I wondering if any
of these recipes would work well with margarine...

With all these pineapple tarts baking, I'm asking myself... Have I find thepineapple tart recipe? I think so... I have discovered a lot more pineapple tart recipes recently. Some are simply the enclosed kind. Some are the nastar kind. Some are the Taiwan-style kind... In particular, I would like to try these two recipes from Sonia, Nasi Lemak Lover and Angel from Cook.Bake.Love before Chinese New Year next year. If time permits, I would love to try baking a lot more pineapple tarts recipes any time sooner...Happy Baking

Thumbs up for the effort , Zoe!I didnt find my tarts made using recipe 1 fragile though. I had no problems stacking them into tupper ware containers. Maybe because I made them into closed tarts rather than open ones, and I mistakenly baked them longer for 20 to 25 min on the middle tray for my 1st batch, when they should have been baked for 10 to 15 min in the upper tray, (which i did for my 2nd batch). But surprisingly that didnt affect the quality at all, both batches tasted almost the same!

Just curious, why didn't u experiment with wendy's tart recipe? Is it because she used cream cheese which is not used by the others, so you can't make a side-by-side comparison?

Nice to have you analyze lots of pineapple tarts baking with me. We sure love our pineapple tarts... LOL!

You are right that yours are the enclosed ones and so they are much more easier to handle. I baked my open-faced ones for just 13 mins and I reckon our baking times vary due to their difference in sizes and our ovens. I reckon that baking time is critical for open-faced pineapple tart baking as my oven is fan forced which can be over-bake food easily with its high heat and so 13 mins is the optimal timing for me.

Yes that I did tried Wendy's recipe (http://bakeforhappykids.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/getting-ready-for-chinese-new-year.html). Her recipe is good but I still prefer Little Teochew and Mandy's recipe. I'm surprised too that either cream cheese or milk powder can't enhance the melt-y taste of these tarts further. Next, I'm curious to try Sonia's and Cook.Bake.Love's recipes. These two recipes especially Sonia's one are very well-reviewed but all I need now is to find time and pineapples to bake more tarts again...

I am glad I only tried one recipe and it turned out to be the best. I have kiv'ed Wendy's pineapple tart recipe but I chose the recipe from SSB (taken from Fresh from the Oven) over hers bcos I personally dun like to play with sticky dough and I din happen to have cream cheese in my fridge. After hearing what you said, I can just stick to that recipe in the future.

Really thanks for the detailed analysis. I am a hoarder of baking recipes but I dun have the patience to do a detailed analysis like what you did. I depend mostly on the reviews by others and by how much I trust the blogger. Some bloggers tend to over exaggerate while some are not detailed in their steps. :)

I believe that whether a food is delicious or not can very subjective. The level of acceptance of certain ideal taste or texture can depend very much on individual tastes and preferences and all I can do is to describe my personal opinions as much as possible. Certainly, I hope not to exaggerate or missing out any details... If it is good to me, I would say that it is good... Otherwise, I wouldn't.

Nice to know that we have great passion with our food and love to hear more of your opinions.

I have linked back my pineapple tart post to Little Thumbs Up and Bake for Happy Kids. I do not know what I should do next......Here is my post pineapple tart, do let me know if this is in order or should I email the link to you. Thank you!

No worries! I have already submitted the link for you. If you wish to participate our future events like our bake-along or Cook like a Star events. You may wish to know that all you need next is to click an icon with "Add your link" with the little frog face and submit your details accordingly.

If you are interested to blog hop in the future, I can help you step by step so that you can have all our links at your blog too. Cheers!

I think recipe wise, some prefer the more crumbly type and some the crispier type, so I find that different recipes simply work for different people. Thanks for the detailed analysis, now I can pick the one I prefer :)

Yes, fresh the oven looks the best to me too, and I hadn't even tasted those delicious-looking pineapple tarts. The fresh from the oven ones look nice and golden-brown, the crust looks really good...and homemade jam must make them even better.

Zoe , great comparison chart ! So , the search for the ultimate pineapple tart is not over yet ? lol Your tarts are so pretty and I'm sure tastes really delicious ! I'll try this Taiwanese pineapple tart recipe that I've found in one of the newspaper here :D I'll use Sonia's pineapple filling . Will post it sometime next week as I haven't bought fresh pineapple yet :P

Thanks for sharing ur experiment and the mention. i like all ur pineapple tarts especially the sun flower, it is very special.

I tried Sonia's recipe this year. The texture of pastry is crumbly (sandy) type whereas my aunt's recipe the pastry is firm yet tender. Taste wise both are well balanced and I reckon my aunt's one is more buttery and milky as the butter to flour ratio is higher and the recipe uses milk powder.

I hope you can give both recipes a try next year and I look forward to reading ur analysis. :)

You are such an Angel giving those informations. Pineapple tarts are my favourite. So far I have not make it but with your full informations, I believe I will make it in the future. Thanks a lot. Happy Lunar New Year to you and family.

Hello Zoe! Thank you for your kind comment and for following my blog. It is much appreciated!

I always eat fresh pineapple. I rarely ever bake with it. I have vintage pineapple salad I posted on my blog last summer but I am not sure you would be interested in it! But I can link it up with you would like!

Sorry that I can't include your pineapple salad post as I have set one of the conditions of this event to accept any pineapple related posts that is posted within Jan to Feb 2013.

If you are cooking or baking anything with Tomatoes early next month, I would appreciate if you can link with my blogging friend, Doreen. Otherwise, we are cooking Delia Smith for the whole month of March 2013... Wanna join in the fun?

Hi Zoe! Happy Chinese New Year and happy Valentine's Day! I love your heart-shape pineapple tarts, really adorable! I've never played around with the different pineapple tarts recipes, as the first one I tried was already a success for me (taken from Fresh from the Oven). I did experimented with different types of butter and found that Elle & Vire makes the most buttery tarts but SCS butter gave the tarts a milky buttery taste.

Yes... I remember your post showing the difference with different butter used. Totally agree with you that the quality of butter makes a lot of taste differences. My personal favourite is The Danish butter particularly, Lurpak. I love the smell of its creamy milky texture :D

Oooh Lurpak's really expensive, my heart breaks whenever I bought a piece to bake haha! I actually wanted to participate in the Little Thumbs Up, thought the deadline was end of February, but realized the link was already closed... oh well... hopefully will be able to participate in the upcoming Tomatoes one!

Wouw Wouw Wouw you absolutely an excellent pineapple tarts fans .... I should try this recipe next year :) Here I would like to wish you and your family a prosperous & fruitful water snake year :) Huat arh !!!

Wow! What an interesting post & very lovely tarts . My fussy boss does not like the crumble pineapple tarts. But I on the other hand love those melt in the mouth pineapple tarts. So I think you've found the perfect pastry dough - biscuit-like texture. Thanks for posting these recipes will try it out for but Mr. fussy! LOL BTW I'll be posting a pineapple recipe that I love to share . Hopefully I won't forget to post it before the deadline! LOL

Hi Zoe, Thanks a lot of adding my post to Little Thunmbs Up event . I was few hours late to submit my pineapple post & I don't want to bother you about it. But I promise that I won't be late for TOMATO event! In fact I've already done it ! hehehehe

Do you find that pineapple tart don't keep fresh for long as the jam seems to soften the biscuits base after a few days? My mother-in-law always keep hers in the fridge to keep fresh. I prefer the melt in the mouth base and sugar is important to balance the sourness from the pineapple. Great post Zoe and happy CNY to you!

If your pineapple jam is well cooked with not much water content, the tart pastry should be soften at all. I prefer to store my tarts in room temperature for its nice and soft buttery texture. They can harden when they are stored at room temperature. I reckon in this case, the jam is the critical factor :D

Good morning, Zoe, love your pineapple tarts. I made something that used fresh pineapple juice on Valentine's Day and realised that I can submit it to your Little Thumbs Up but I've promised myself will only start "working" again on Tue(19th Feb), is it too late for the submission? Is this running for the entire month of Feb? I use tomatoes for like 4-5 times a week in my daily cooking, see whether I have something interesting to share later as well. Oh, before I forgot, where can I get those cookies press in Australia? Have a nice weekend!

No worries at all. Please let me know if you need me to bring forward the closing date.

Please join us at our tomato event. Doreen will be happy *wink*

To answer your question, I actually bought my tart moulds from Poon Huat at Singapore. I can find the standard plastic ones at the local market near my home but not the heart shaped ones. You have anyone living at Melbourne to buy these for you. Otherwise, please let me know and I can arrange something for you :D

Whoa! You are so hardworking in making and comparing the recipes. All 3 has its own texture. I like my pineapple tarts the Nyonya way, which is 'biscuity' close to a 'tart' like texture to the pastry. I don't really fancy the 'melt in the mouth' or very buttery texture when it comes to this cookie. I can tell you that I'm very picky with the types of pineapple tarts. From the looks of it, you had fun doing it and enjoyed doing it. I don't mind sampling some of yours and tell you which one I like most.. lol

I'm thinking too of baking some Nyonya ones based on some of Nyonya cookbooks... There are so many recipes to explore and yet so little time :D Please let me know if you have found any interesting recipes.

We’ve recently launched the website Alldishes.co.uk. It’s a search engine that aims to gather all the best recipes from UK and Irish websites and blogs. We’ve noticed that you have a lot of great looking recipes on your blog that we would love to feature on our site. To read more about how it all works and to sign up with your blog, please visit: http://alldishes.co.uk or send us an email on info@alldishes.co.uk. We look forward to hearing from you!Kind regards,Senka

Hi Zoe,Thanks for inviting me to submit for this event. I have already linked my pineapple post to your blog. I am not sure if this is what I should do next but here is the link to my post : http://www.renryl.blogspot.sg/2013/02/pineapple-tarts-rolled-and-open-faced.html

Believe or not, I've asked the shop that sells the mould why is she not doing an online business for her products and she said that she did before but it became a hassle when she has to spend all the time and effort to send small products and she earns less than a dollar for doing this and so she stopped. I guess you have to make a trip to Melbourne (Preston Market) if you really want to buy these.